Elder Daniel Squires, Frankfurt Germany

Monday, May 5, 2014

Well, here we go, the last email on the mission! It is
ridiculous howfast the time has gone, and I am really excited to see you
guys in afew days!

I had a really great last week of the mission.
Most of ourappointments worked out, and even though I was feeling kind of
trunkythe first few days, it got better by the end of the week. I
haven'tbeen thinking about it too terribly much, but I definitely have been
alittle anxious the last few days and it's harder to fall asleep sincemy
brain just bounces everywhere and won't turn off.

Monday was a good
P-day. The Unna Elders came and chilled with us atthe apartment, and when we
were done chilling, Elder Moore left forUnna with Elder Pratt and I stayed
on a split with Elder Haskell inHagen. We went to our ward mission leader's
apartment for dinner, andhis wife hemmed the pants I got for the week you
will be here. Afterwe ate dinner, we drove to an old lady's house named Frau
Altmeyer,who is a former investigator. She had randomly read in the Book
ofMormon about physical and spiritual death, so we talked about thatwith
her.

On Tuesday, we had the final district meeting of the transfer,
whichwas really good. I split back with Elder Moore afterwards. We then
hadto take a big chunk of time and go to Düsseldorf to get a new
traincard for Elder Moore. The chip in his old one broke, and we took a
45minute train ride to go across the street of the station inDüsseldorf,
have the guy program a new card for about fifteen seconds,and then take
another train back to Hagen. It was kind ofinconvenient, but it was
necessary. We ended the night with ourEnglish class and writing thank you
notes for the members.

Wednesday was probably the slowest day of the
week. We continuedworking on thank you notes, deep-cleaned the apartment
(cleaningchecks were the next morning), and went by on an investigator who
wasnot home.

Thursday was a little more eventful. It was the 1st of
May, which is aholiday in Germany, so there were not a lot of people on the
streets.We had a lunch appointment with a younger couple in the ward and
thenheaded to the church to make the invitation for Moritz's baptism.
Inthe evening, we drove out to Breckerfeld (a small town south of
Hagen)to go by on a couple old referrals, but neither of them were at
home.

Friday was when the week started to speed up. We had our studies
andweekly planning (my last weekly plan ever haha) and then had a
lessonwith a newer investigator, Monica. She is having struggles with
givingup smoking, and she also suffers depression. We gave her a
blessingand told her that at the next lesson, we wanted to begin teaching
thelessons since that will help her more than anything else in giving
upsmoking. After the appointment, we made a few batches of brownies
formembers who had birthdays. When we were finished with that, we
headedto the west side of town for a short appointment with the Gens
family.That was the last big thing we were able to accomplish that
day.

We had a very busy Saturday. We cut studies short to go help a
membercouple move from one side of town to another for a couple hours,
thenwent straight home to shower and go to Iserlohn to have lunch with
theGusts. We then headed over together to Manuella's apartment and had
alesson with her about life after death. A partner at work had askedher
about it, so she wanted to know more so she could tell her how itis. She
herself also was a little spotty with her knowledge of thenext life, so we
helped her understand that as well. After thatappointment, we rushed home
and then took a bus to Bruder Kramer'shouse. We had a good time there and
showed him the new "Because ofHim" video on the church's
website.

Sunday was awesome. We had a really great sacrament meeting, and
wehad three investigators at church. Moritz, Manuella, and, for thefirst
time, Monica came. It was a really good fast and testimonymeeting, and I
hope it helped our investigators a lot. After themeetings and some goodbyes
to members, we met in a classroom withMoritz to discuss the Law of Chastity,
the Word of Wisdom, andtithing. He accepted all of them and is way excited
for his baptism.The cool thing was that we usually try and have members
present forthe teaching of lessons to investigators, and our stake
president,Präsident Zarse, was able to assist us. Afterwards, he took us to
hishouse in Lüdenscheid and we had lunch with him and his family.
Uponarriving home, we used the rest of the night to finish our
studies.

Well, that was the last week. We will be relatively busy for the
nextfew days, which is of course really good. Tonight we go to
ourbishop's house for his less-active son's birthday. Tomorrow, we
havedistrict meeting, a member appointment in the afternoon, and then
ourEnglish class. On Wednesday we have planned to have a lesson
withMonica, and then we have ward council. It will be a quick bit of
time,and then we will meet up in Frankfurt on Thursday!

Monday, April 28, 2014

Well, this last
week was pretty interesting and busy week.I had one of the strangest appointments
of my mission on Tuesday. Theweek before, we got a call from a woman living
in our area who saidshe was a less-active member of the church, and she
wanted us to comeand talk to her daughter. She didn't speak the greatest
English orGerman, so we couldn't find out exactly what the purpose of our
visitshould be or what we were supposed to talk about with her daughter.
Wedrove over there on Tuesday afternoon with our ward mission leader.The
woman was an Asian lady, and she invited us into her smallapartment. She
first asked us to look around the apartment and tellher what we thought. She
then proceeded to tell us about how she had afew kids that weren't allowed
to live with her and she didn't reallyknow where all of them are, she had
recently been divorced for thethird time and her husband had her scriptures
and member records, andthat she didn't want to get a job since the welfare
in Germany wasgiving her more money than a small job in the town would. It
was alljust a strange situation, and we couldn't really tell her what
sheshould do since that is not our responsibility. We later left with
aprayer, and then she followed us all the way out of the apartment andto
the car, which was a good distance away. When we finally droveaway, our ward
mission leader said he realized during the appointmentwho she was and that
she tells a bunch of weird stories and doesn'tlook for work so that the
church will pay for her to travel around tovisit her kids. It was a sad
situation, but we couldn't really doanything. Anyway, later on
we had our English class, which went well.

On Wednesday, I went on a
split in Paderborn with Elder Richards. Itwas kind of a bad day; all of the
appointments they had set up fellout. So we spent some time finding and also
updating information onthe referral manager system the church has
online.

We had a back to back split with the Paderborn Elders, so I went
on asplit on Thursday with Elder Isham. This time I was in Hagen. We
spenta good 4 hours on trains going from Paderborn to a town
calledLüdenscheid. It is a long trip anyway, but our train got delayed
byabout 45 minutes so it took a while. We visited a less-active
memberthere who is actually the brother of my old Elder's Quorum
Presidentfrom Langen. He is a cool guy, he is just kind of tangled up in
theways of the world right now though. We watched some of the
church'snew videos online with him, and he seemed to like them. We will
startmeeting with him a little bit more regularly, and hope that we
canhelp him see the fruits of living the gospel.

Friday consisted of
district meeting in Unna and then later on astreet display in their
pedestrian zone. We didn't see a ton ofsuccess, but we were able to give out
4 copies of the Book of Mormon.That took up the rest of the day, pretty
much.

On Saturday, Elder Moore and I visited a member who is moving
nextweek and helped him work in the garden at the new apartment,
gettingit ready to plant grass on top. As we were doing that, we got a
textfrom Moritz, who said he had started to face opposition in his
familyagainst him getting baptized. I got kind of worried and thought
maybeit would keep him from getting baptized on his scheduled day. He
saidhis sister and brother-in-law said he is not old enough to make such
abig decision so quickly and that if his girlfriend (a member) dumpshim,
he won't even want to be in the church anymore. We planned totalk with him
about that the next day at church. We ended the nightwith our weekly Bruder
Kramer appointment.

We went to church on Sunday morning, and I had a nice
surprise there.The Helzers, one of my favorite families from Solingen, were
at churchbecause a relative's baby was getting blessed. It was cool catching
upwith them and getting a picture together. Moritz showed up
duringopening exercises at priesthood, and we took him aside with our
wardmission leader to talk about his situation. It was kind of intense.
Weshared with him the story of Joseph Smith being persecuted for
hisbeliefs, and I also talked about Eric Corpuz's story when he
gotbaptized. Moritz said at the end of the appointment that he was
stillplanning on getting baptized on the 11th, and he prayed at the end
forstrength to overcome the opposition in his family. It was awesome.
Wehad a really good Sunday with church, and later on an
eatingappointment with a cool family in the ward.

Well, today is my
second to last P-day. The Unna Elders are coming ina little while, and we
will chill and then I will go on my last splitwith Elder Haskell. It should
be fun. We will meet with our wardmission leader tonight and then have
district meeting tomorrow.